Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Samuel · About this commentary
Looking for Donkeys
1 Samuel 9:1-14
1 Now there was a man of Benjamin, whose name was Kish the son of Abiel, the son of Zeror, the son of Becorath, the son of Aphiah, the son of a Benjamite, a mighty man of valor. · WEB
A tall young man, some lost livestock, and a servant with a quarter shekel — providence bringing a king to a prophet by the least dignified road.
He had a son whose name was Saul, an impressive young man... From his shoulders and upward he was taller than any of the people 1 Samuel 9:2.
The introduction is all surface, and deliberately so. Saul is presented exactly as a people who wanted a king like all the nations 1 Samuel 8:20 would have specified him: tall, handsome, from a family of substance. Every word of praise is about how he looks, and the book has already ruled on that criterion in Hannah's song — no man will prevail by strength 1 Samuel 2:9 — and will state it flatly at the next anointing 1 Samuel 16:7.
The donkeys of Kish, Saul's father, were lost 1 Samuel 9:3.
The road to the throne opens with strayed livestock. Saul's first appearance in action is a fruitless three-day search through Ephraim, Shalishah, Shaalim, Benjamin — a young man doing an errand badly and ready to quit: Come! Let's return, lest my father stop caring about the donkeys and be anxious for us 1 Samuel 9:5. It is a considerate impulse and a small one, and it is the servant, not Saul, who knows there is a man of God nearby and proposes asking him 1 Samuel 9:6. Israel's future king has to be steered toward Israel's prophet by a hired man with a quarter shekel 1 Samuel 9:8.
The narrator's aside — he who is now called a prophet was before called a seer 1 Samuel 9:9 — is a small window on how the book was assembled: written down late enough that the old word needed glossing, and honest enough to gloss it rather than modernize the story.
As they went up the ascent to the city, they found young maidens going out to draw water, and said to them, "Is the seer here?" 1 Samuel 9:11.
The girls' answer runs long and eager, and its detail does the timing: Samuel has come today, the sacrifice is today, hurry and you will catch him 1 Samuel 9:12–13. Then the meeting is staged to the step — as they came within the city, behold, Samuel came out toward them 1 Samuel 9:14. Not one link in the chain knows what it is carrying: not the donkeys, not the servant, not the girls at the well, not Saul. Providence in this book rarely announces itself; it looks like errands, and it arrives on time.
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